The Importance of Confession – openness and brokenness in marriage
The enemy will do all he can to keep us from being open with our spouse about our sexual failures. Satan will convince us that confessing them will only bring hurt and confusion, that God has already forgiven us, and that it’s a sin of the past that has been dealt with. However, until we are open with our marriage partner regarding all failures—past and present—we will remain in bondage.
When we marry, we enter into a covenant before the Lord with our husband or wife. I Corinthians 7:4 says, “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife” The word power in this verse means to exercise authority. Thus, by entering into marriage, we are yielding our right to our own body. It now belongs to God and to our spouse.
All sexual sin is against the body. (See I Corinthians 6:18.) Since marriage partners have authority over each other’s bodies, all hidden sins should be confessed. A wife has the right to know and ask questions regarding her husband’s failures. Her husband’s sexual behavior is her business. The same concept holds true for sexual failures in the wife’s life. Her husband has the right to know about them. They must work together to receive forgiveness and walk in freedom.
The lie that a husband or wife doesn’t need to know about the other’s moral failures is one of Satan’s most powerful tools. As long as we keep any sin hidden in our heart, we are giving him a platform from which to work, and we will remain in bondage. However, bringing past failures to light by making a complete confession allows the Lord to bring freedom to our lives and breaks the bondage of the enemy.
A Lesson in Honesty, aka “Coming Clean” by Travis “Pat” Alexander October 2002
I’d always heard that if you tell one lie, you eventually must tell another one to cover up the first. But I didn’t really understand the implications of continuing this pattern over several years. The web woven by my expanding matrix of lies grew and grew until it devastated every aspect of my life. Obviously it affected my relationship with my spouse.
My analysis starts with the “crash”. I hit the low point of my life the day I was fired for viewing inappropriate websites at work. I had to go home and explain. Without much thought, I proceeded home and begged for forgiveness. I thought our discussion would be about jobs and careers and boredom at work. But my wife wanted more of an explanation. She wanted to know everything. What had I looked at? Who had I emailed? Why was I unable to avoid this outcome, after being caught and reprimanded three months earlier?
Her questioning uncovered an addiction to sex. It revealed the tip of an iceberg that I believed would never be fully disclosed. I knew there was a deep-seated problem, but I had never identified it. Even in numerous discussions with professional psychologists, it hadn’t come to light. Oh, they were good. But I kept the details to myself, making it impossible for them to diagnose the problem.
Now, the rules have changed. If I want to stay in the relationship I will have to be completely honest. I will have to reveal everything I ever did that might be considered inappropriate. Every woman I was with, every bar I visited, every dollar I spent. But I can’t remember them all. Really, I can’t. I am confused. I am hurting, and feeling an incredible amount of guilt. Each story I tell about my indiscretions is rooted in a lie. Not only did I hurt her by acting so selfishly on those uncontrollable desires, but I lied to her. I lied to make the situations possible; I lied to cover them up; I lied to protect her.
So when she said, “Is that all, is that everything?”, I believed it was all. I believed I had told the whole truth, and I was satisfied with that. I believed that because I was lying to myself. The rest didn’t matter. No one would ever know about those indiscretions that remain unspoken. There was enough found out to fire me, to bury me, to leave me. That’s enough, I thought. But there was more.
One painful vision at a time, they came out. Revealed by stray records of money spent, or by recovered files of emails forgotten. With each new revelation came deeper pain for my wife, who had endured all she could imagine by then. But the web of lies was thick, and it took some time to get through it all. There was much pain. Unnecessary pain, that could have been prevented by an injection of honesty anywhere along the road.
Amazing as it is, she and I are together today. Living by new rules that are preventing a new lie from getting a foothold. The new rules include 100 percent accountability for time, money, whereabouts, and behavior. When I first agreed to follow these rules, it appeared impossible. But it is possible. And now I consider the rules my friends, because they are helping to keep me where I want to be. Out of trouble and in this relationship. I wish I had understood how easily I could get in so deep. It started with one lie.